Bananas

"So many dreams that are finally coming true... now you finish me off when you finish my thoughts the way you do!" -- Patti Russo

One Doc in Particular has been craving bananas lately, so I've been making lots of trips to the fruit stand across the street where they're sold four for a dollar. As a result, I've developed an interesting rapport with the fruit stand's proprietor... one based entirely on crass innuendos about bananas.

Three weeks ago...

Me: What are your bananas like today?
Fruit Man: They're great! I've got big ones, little ones, fat ones. What kind do you want?
Me: I'll take those big ones. On top.
Fruit Man: Ah, the lady knows what she likes!

Last week...

Me: I'd like four bananas, please.
Fruit Man: I'm going to give you these. They're long and skinny, just like you.
Me: Uh... thanks?

This morning...

Me: I'm just going to grab four bananas today, thanks.
Fruit Man: Grabbing bananas is a wonderful way to start your day.
Me: I know. That's why I need so many!

Luckily, what I do for a living means I have zero shyness about urologic humor. Let's just hope my doc friend doesn't decide that he wants melons for breakfast any time soon.

Storm Stories

"We've got a low-pressure system and a northeast breeze, we've got a falling barometer and rising seas. We've got the cumulonimbus and a possible gale, we've got a Force 9 blowing on the Beaufort scale." -- Billy Joel

Friday, 9:00 AM: I make a beautiful blueberry almond cake for a dinner party I'm hosting later in the day.

11:00 AM: Said dinner party gets cancelled because of the "hurricane" people seem to think we're getting. More cake for me, I guess.

12:00 PM: And here come the emergency email alerts from work. People actually think this hurricane thing is going to happen? Weren't we supposed to have one of these a few weeks ago, too? Lightweights.

12:30 PM: Work just contacted me. Other hospitals are evacuating, patients are getting transferred to us, and we might be short-staffed over the weekend. I agree to put my name on the call list for emergency volunteers. Crap... I guess this hurricane thing is actually happening.

12:35 PM: I just realized that putting my name on the call list means I'm confined to my apartment for the entire weekend.

1:00 PM: So what am I supposed to be doing? I've never had a hurricane before! I should stock up on food and water, I guess. I have candles and a flashlight. Laundry goes in. Phone plugs into the charger. My Dutch oven and big pasta pot get filled with water and stored. Better refill the ice tray, too.

3:00 PM: I head over to the supermarket. Bedlam! Crazy! I wasn't aware that this many people lived in my neighborhood in the first place!

3:15 PM: A woman in the freezer section is screaming on the top of her lungs about ice. "There's no ice! How could there not be any ice! What if the power goes out? I need ice!" I helpfully remind her that the power isn't out yet and that she should put some water in her freezer. "Hey, that's a good idea!" she responds.

3:20 PM: The guy on line behind me, who has a cart full of tuna fish, points at the mushrooms and head of broccoli in my basket and asks me why I'm buying so many perishable items. I say mushrooms and broccoli will last just fine in a cool fridge rather than a cold one. He nods thoughtfully. Nothing like a little rain to bring out the crazy in people.

3:30 PM: Looks like I'll be stuck in my apartment for the foreseeable future. Let's see what's on Netflix.

3:35 PM: My top recommendation is the complete series of Firefly. I've never seen that show... completely missed it when it was on the air for ten minutes ten years ago and only learned about its existence through obsessed friends during college. It has serious geek cred, though... and it stars my second-favorite Canadian. What the hell, let's give it a try!

4:00 PM: This is stupid.

4:25 PM: River Tam is annoying.

4:30 PM: Not even Nathan Fillion can save this shit.

4:35 PM: Hold on... is Jayne played by the same guy who played the Area 51 commander from Independence Day? Google Google Wikipedia Google... aha! He is! I had a huge crush on him when I was ten! Wow, this brings back memories.

4:45 PM: This isn't bad.

5:00 PM: River Tam is still annoying.

5:15 PM: Jayne shooting people is way sexier than it should be.

6:15 PM: This is awesome.

7:30 PM: Half the cake is gone. Whoops.

11:00 PM: Why hello, shirtless Jayne. Damnit, he's hot.

11:30 PM: Work sends a second emergency alert; all the lab buildings are closing for the weekend. I bet my friends -- and one doc in particular -- are freaking out right about now.

11:32 PM: The aforementioned doc in particular texts me in a panic because he's getting thrown out of his lab for the weekend and has experiments running.

11:50 PM: Jayne's pumping iron now. I could watch this all day.

Saturday, 2:30 AM: Crap look at the time! And I'm not even tired!

2:32 AM: Zzzzzz.

9:30 AM: Now that I'm washed and dressed and in my right mind, time to continue the hurricane prep. Windows and blinds are closed. Maybe I'll fill up my bathtub too. If only my stopper sealed tighter...

9:40 AM: I am the MacGyver of storm preparation.

12:00 PM: Am I supposed to like River Tam yet? Twelve episodes in and I still don't.

1:30 PM: Mom, you need to stop calling me. And no, I am not sleeping in my kitchen tonight "just in case." You do know there are knives on top of my fridge that might come raining down on my sleeping form if I kick the door the wrong way, right?

3:30 PM: I'm getting impatient with the amount of time it's taking my oil paints to dry in this weather. The skyline of Manhattan at sunset I'm currently working on has rolling hills instead of buildings, and I can't do a damn thing about it until the paint I used for the clouds is dry.

3:35 PM: I used a lot of cadmium yellow in this painting. Cadmium is a carcinogen and I'm sitting here with all my windows closed. I'll crack one just a little bit.

3:38 PM: I closed the window. Too nervous.

4:30 PM: All fourteen episodes plus Serenity have now been viewed. Jayne needs to have my babies and I still wish someone would have tossed River out of the airlock a few episodes ago. And work hasn't called me to come in. What to do...? Aha! The new season of Doctor Who started today!

4:45 PM: Who needs River Tam when you've got River Song? Sigh, what a badass.

7:30 PM: Dinner time! I made tri-color orecchiette with broccoli in a light mornay sauce, baked until golden brown. Or, more simply, glorified mac and cheese.

7:45 PM: Crap... it just got really dark out there really fast.

8:00 PM: A couple of my friends are online. Let's use Google + Hangouts to wait out the storm together!

8:05 PM: Jon can see me, I can't hear anyone, and no one else showed up. Let's abandon that idea.

10:00 PM: It's blowing something fierce out there. My bed is next to the windows. So is my couch. And the asshats across the street didn't do anything about their patio furniture. I'll drag the couch into my foyer tonight so I'm not sleeping next to panes of glass.

10:01 PM: Couch. Heavy. Ow. Forget it.

10:20 PM: Pillow fort on the floor in the foyer!

10:30 PM: This is way more comfortable than it should be.

Sunday, 2:45 AM: My ass is cold. The rest of me is fine, but my ass is cold.

2:46 AM: Oh. The couch cushions slid apart during the night and my booty fell into the vacant spot. I should rearrange my pillow fort so it's wedged against the wall.

8:45 AM: Plink plink plink... what the hell is that noise?

9:00 AM: Clock radio went off. The classic rock station is playing their usual Sunday morning Beatles lineup, and somehow all of the songs are storm-related. Guess the UK weather had a bigger effect on the Fab Four than I ever realized.

9:10 AM: Still with the plink plink plink. It's coming from the kitchen. Not the refrigerator, not the oven, not the toaster. Ah, great. My ceiling is dripping. Where's that old frying pan?

9:15 AM: Mmmm, coffee. Finding the super to ask about the flood status of the apartment above mine can wait.

10:00 AM: The streets are dry and it looks like the sun is coming out. Guess it's safe to empty my bathtub, huh?

12:00 PM: My kitchen wall is bulging. And it's squishy. Greeeat, there's water in there, too.

12:30 PM: I should have frozen half of that bread loaf I bought last week... just tried to toast a slice and found it moldy. In the chute it goes. And the supermarkets are still closed. Time to bake bread, I guess!

2:30 PM: My butter-almond bread dough rose beautifully! Now I need to flour my table, punch down the dough, roll it up with some cinnamon sugar, and let it rise for another two hours.

2:31 PM: I bobbled the flour container. Half a pound of flour is on my floor. And on my jeans. And in my handbag.

2:35 PM: Made the mistake of using a wet paper towel to mop up the flour. Now I'm Cloroxing sticky paste off my parquet.

3:00 PM: I took a walk during my dough's second rise. My neighborhood is wet but completely undamaged. Thank goodness.

4:40 PM: Bread is in the oven and the alien in my wall is gone. Now the paint just looks deflated and pathetic.

5:00 PM: Work never called for me. Woo!

5:30 PM: My apartment smells like fresh-baked bread. And the bread itself looks delicious.

5:40 PM: My apartment smells like the two burnt slices of fresh-baked bread that didn't agree with my toaster oven.

6:00 PM: I'm wandering around in circles with a steaming pot of boiled vinegar water to try and get the burnt smell out of the air. I feel like I'm participating in some sort of crazy religious ritual here.

6:30 PM: The aforementioned doc just texted me. He wants me to bring the remainder of the blueberry almond cake to clinic tomorrow. Hahahaha... he thinks that cake lasted the night... poor naive man.

7:00 PM: Baking another blueberry almond cake would replace the burnt toast smell with delicious cake smell. Hm. Do I have any milk left? Yes, but I'm low on blueberries. This will have to be a blueberry almond peach cake instead.

7:50 PM: Ironing for work tomorrow. Seth MacFarlane cartoons are on TV. Something delicious is in the oven. Typical end to an atypical weekend.

I Know This Looks Bad, But...

"It's the same old song, but with a different meaning since you've been gone." -- The Four Tops

It's been raining on and off all day -- and by "raining" I mean "walking outside feels like having buckets of water thrown on you." I was fortunate enough to get stuck outside during one of these deluges, and while I have no problems walking in the rain, my feet were sliding around in my shoes too much to make any semblance of walking possible. Thus, I conceded defeat and ducked into a drugstore to wait it out.

I checked my appearance in one of the cosmetics aisle mirrors; aside from my dripping hair and a black ring of mascara around each eye, I didn't think I looked too terrible. I wandered around, picked up a couple of items, made small talk with a couple about the deliciousness of Pop Chips. When I saw that the skies had cleared, I made my way to the register.

I greeted the cashier. He looked at my runny makeup, then he looked at the two items I was purchasing. He picked up the package of feminine products, scanned it, and placed it into a bag. He picked up the bottle of Drano, scanned it, started to place it in the bag, then hesitated. He held it up and raised an eyebrow. "You're not planning on drinking this, are you?" he asked.

I didn't look that awful. I swear.

How To Run A Business

"I don't need you to think of me as a person! I have women for that!" -- from Coupling

I went for a run earlier today, and on the way back to my apartment, I stopped into my new favorite coffee shop. This place hasn't been open long, but it's a double win in my book -- not only does it make the best espresso on the upper east side, but it employs a baristo who always greets me with "Hello, gorgeous," "Good morning, my love," or something similarly soul-warming.

Resplendent in sweat-drenched Under Armour, I stepped up to the counter to place my order. A barista I've never seen before was manning the register while my usual guy stood near her.

New Barista: Hello. What can I get for you today?
Me: Hi. A double americano with room, please.
New Barista: No problem. That'll be $2.71.
Me: Here you go.
New Barista: Thanks. Your americano is coming up on the right. Have a great day, beautiful.
Usual Baristo: Isn't she beautiful?! I always say that!

This, folks, is how to inspire customer loyalty.

(And please don't judge me for drinking double shots of espresso after working out.)

Memory

"Oh dear, that was a great mistake! My mind wandered from repenting to thinking it wouldn't have been a sin if [the roles were reversed]. And changing them over has made me realize more and more how I have spoilt the memory... how will I face my wretched future?" -- Dodie Smith

I didn't sleep last night and spent most of my day wandering aimlessly around the upper east side. I was lost in thought, or rather, lost in memory.

One memory in particular was at the epicenter of my thoughts. For one amazing evening, I was bold, I was uncharacteristically reckless but in complete command of every nerve ending in my body, and I enjoyed an enormous payoff for my risk. Between then and now, this memory has mentally fused with other memories -- some more melancholy than others, but all of the intense, hopeful, satisfied variety -- and the resulting web has generated a full range of associated emotions. Now, calling on any of those emotions evokes the memories and dwelling on any of the experiences recalls the feelings.

Last night, as I lay awake, a new memory became ensnared in this particular web. Its similarity to the epicenter memory guaranteed similar mental categorization, but the point-of-view shift evoked the less delicious aspects of my other related experiences. And one by one, as the minutes of the night ticked by, each memory in the web mutated. An appreciative gift became pity. Pent-up longing became boredom. The epicenter memory remained relatively pristine until mid-morning, but it inevitably turned on me too.

I walked and thought and remembered, and by the time I circled back to my own neighborhood, time had been rewritten. I have a completely new set of memories now. And unlike the ones they replaced -- those blessed moments that sustained me during some pretty dark times -- these new ones make me feel terrible. I know I won't be able to call on them to help me through a single damn thing.

Appropriately, between the time I left my apartment this morning and the time I returned this afternoon, James De La Vega had been at work in my neighborhood. De La Vega, a prolific artist who chalks words of wisdom on the streets of New York City, wrote the following message on the pavement a few blocks away from my apartment:

Many of De La Vega's messages tend to repeat -- "become your dream" and "you are your best investment" are two common ones -- but I'd never seen this one before. It's a lot less uplifting than his usual stuff too, which makes me wonder whether his muses intended it for my eyes only today.

I Still Have A Doppelganger

"Oh Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start. And I bet, then you exploded in my heart. And I forget... I forget the movie song. When are you gonna realize it was just that the timing was wrong?" -- The Killers


I've written at length about my doppelganger -- the woman my colleagues mistake for me at the gym who was also spotted on the UWS by my nurse last fall. (We're ignoring the Cafe Mozart portrait model and the Notre Dame High School graduate from 1948 here, since it's unlikely that my doppelganger is anywhere near as old as either of those women.)

I bet you wondered whatever happened to the nameless chick who dares to walk around the island of Manhattan wearing my face. Well, an entire year passed with no sign of her. But apparently... she's back.

About two months ago, a security guard in my office wished me a good morning and struck up a conversation...

Guard: You're so lucky to live so close to work.
Me: I know! It's exactly one mile.
Guard: One mile? You live in the corner building above the Chinese restaurant!
Me: No, I don't...
Guard: Does your boyfriend live in the corner building, then?
Me: No, he doesn't. Why do you ask?
Guard: I've seen you come out of that building a couple of times.
Me: It wasn't me you saw.
Guard: I see you every day! I know what you look like!
Me: I'm telling you, it wasn't me!
Guard: Weird. Oh well.

About one month ago, I stopped at Gotham for coffee and the woman on line behind me smiled in my direction. She kept smiling and I kept my gaze fixed firmly in the opposite direction as I collected my coffee. She then approached me as I was adding milk.

Woman: You seem busy so I won't stay to talk long, but I just thought you should know that Winnie is still in physical therapy.
Me: I'm sorry, I don't know who Winnie is.
Woman: But...
Me: Apparently, there's a woman in this neighborhood who looks just like me. I've been mistaken for her before; perhaps she knows Winnie. I'm sorry.
Woman: Okay...

About one week ago, an elderly couple strolled into my office lobby as I was waiting for the elevator. They yelled "Michelle!" a couple of times. After the third yell, I realized that I was the only person in the lobby and turned around.

Me: I'm Ashley.
Man: Ashley? But you look just like Michelle! Doesn't she look like Michelle?
Woman: Yes! You and Michelle could be twins, dear!
Man: They absolutely could! Same height and everything!
Me: Um, thank you? I'm assuming that's a good thing, at any rate.
Woman: Of course it is. Wow, what a funny coincidence! I need to tell Michelle!

The elevator appeared and I hightailed it the hell out of there.

Finally, two days ago, my boss came to work with a stiff neck and shoulder. Why? He saw me on the street -- miles away from anywhere I actually walked that morning, of course -- and jerked around to wave at me, giving himself a muscle strain in the process. He eventually realized it couldn't be me because of the woman's location, but isn't it funny that the similarity caused him to react like that?

Yep. At what point should I start getting freaked out about all of this?

No Frapp For You!

"She was lucky the Gotham staff is so nice. My local coffee shop is so anti-Starbucks that they would have told her to take a hike the second she said the word 'tall.' -- a coworker


I've written about my favorite coffee shop -- a warm, privately-owned, completely unpretentious place with superbly friendly baristas -- before. It's as different from Starbucks as you can get... but apparently some people still get confused. I overheard the following conversation while I was adding milk to my coffee this morning:


Patron: I'd like a tall soy misto, please.
Baristo: Pardon?
Patron: A tall soy misto.
Baristo: I'm sorry, I don't know what that is.
Patron: Sorry -- a SMALL soy misto.
Baristo: Yep, got that part.
Patron: Okay.
[Pause.]
Baristo: So... is that just coffee with soy?
Patron: Steamed soy.
Baristo: Ah, so a soy cafe au lait!
Patron: Yeah. Whatever.

Safety first!

"Always wear expensive shoes. People notice." -- Brian Koslow


Last night, Dan told me that a combination of snow and rain covered the sidwalks of DC with an eighth of an inch of slush, i.e. "just enough to make you slip and die." I replied that NYC was due for the same disgusting weather today. We discussed the treacherous conditions, strategized how to navigate them without running the risk of cranial fractures, and ended the conversation by telling each other to stay safe.


This morning, one of my colleagues told me a story from her walk to work. As she trudged through the sleet from the bus stop to clinic, she couldn't help but stare at the woman about to cross her path. Or, rather, at the woman's feet. Alone in a sea of miserable boot-clad commuters, this daring lady was wearing sky-high purple suede heels and was blithely hopping over puddles and ice floes en route to her destination.


My colleague stared at the woman for a moment, then realized that she recognized her. She punctuated this part of the story by shooting a glance at my feet and quirking an eyebrow.

Ahem.


In my defense, I was just popping fifty feet across the street for a meeting! And the sky-high purple suede heels are made by Melissa... meaning they're injection-molded from flexible polyvinyl chloride and are thus nonslip and waterproof! And I did wear sneakers for my real commute! And... yeah, I'm out of excuses.

An Open Letter to the Upper East Side After A Snowstorm

"Hardly dashing through the snow because I bundled up too tight." -- The Waitresses

Uggs are not snow boots. They are not waterproof and they have no traction. If you move unnaturally slowly and keep falling over yourself because you insist on wearing them, don't look insulted when I scoot past you on the sidewalk.

Rubber rain wellies are not snow boots, either. I thought this would be obvious, especially considering how loudly you were screeching "OMG my toes are COLD!" in the middle of the street. I know some companies make cold-weather inserts for them; perhaps you should invest.

I've ranted about this in the past, but I'll say it again: you do not need an umbrella in the snow. Snow is the solid form of water, so if it lands on you, brush it off. All an umbrella does is impede the visibility of the person standing behind you, i.e. me, and make already treacherous conditions more dangerous for everyone around you.

I understand you're young and in love. But walking side by side and hand in hand during rush hour after a blizzard isn't a good idea, especially when the shoveled path through the snowdrifts on most sidewalks is only a foot and a half wide.

Dogs do not need sweaters. They manufacture their own sweaters. However, if you insist on putting a sweater on your dog and said dog sits in the middle of the sidewalk trying to chew the sweater off instead of doing its business, "I wonder why he's doing that...?" isn't a bright observation.

Yes, I'm aware that you own a darling mom-and-pop establishment that, by some miracle, has stayed open for sixty years in a tough retail neighborhood. Good for you, and kudos on beating the odds! However, you have no excuse not to shovel your damn sidewalk. If the tiniest old woman I've ever seen has enough strength to sling snow around outside that deli on 74th St., you can certainly do the same.

If your awning collapses onto the sidewalk under the weight of all that snow, drag it to the curb so people can pass. Scaling the thing and vaulting myself over the top, mountaineer-style, isn't on my list of things I like doing at 7:30 in the morning. And circumnavigating your garbage involves walking in the street -- and puts me directly in the path of the oncoming M15.

And speaking of the M15, don't feel bad about taking photos of the three buses stuck in the snow in the middle of the 68th St. intersection. It's hilarious. One of the bus drivers chilled in his seat eating pizza and doughnuts for ten whole hours; I was watching from the window.

Lastly, stop blaming the Dept. of Sanitation for this mess. It's not their fault that a good chunk of their workforce was laid off and remaining staff members have to contend with restricted overtime.

Drawing a Crowd

"I'm just a someone in an old museum, far away from home as someone can go, and the beauty is I still meet people I know. Hello! This is wanting something, this is praying for it. This is holding breath and keeping fingers crossed. This is counting blessings, this is wondering when I'll see that boy again..." -- Adam Guettel

I spent my Saturday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (I think it's safe to call it the first of many Saturdays spent there, since it's a ten-minute walk from my new apartment.) I patronized the new stuff first: I loved John Baldessari's work for its clearly sarcastic overtones, wondered if Charles Rohlfs' wife and kids secretly hated him for filling their home with gorgeously designed yet horrifically uncomfortable-looking furniture, and spent hours -- literally hours -- wandering around the New American Wing and its dozens of new Period Rooms.

I then visited my old favorites -- the sculpture courts, the roof garden where I became a real New Yorker (which is getting a blog post of its own next week), and the upstairs gallery full of portraits of creepy-looking children. I also got in some quality time with my sketchbook:

For the first time ever, my work wasn't photographed by any tourists. (Not to my knowledge, anyway.) Instead, random visitors kept asking me questions about the artwork I was sketching. By closing time, I had explained why Roman sculptures don't have carved pupils and irises to a young couple, retold the Perseus myth to a little girl, gave some high schoolers a lecture on the classical ideal of female beauty, and explained to a young man why the boobs looked weird on the statue of the muse. I have no idea why people thought I knew the answers to their questions; I just had one of those faces today, I guess.

Jacked Up

"Two drifters off to see the world; there's such a lot of world to see. We're after the same rainbow's end. It's just around the bend, my huckleberry friend." -- Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer

New York City experienced a heat index of 110 yesterday, but instead of spending the day in front of the AC in shorts, I braved the weather and the subway system to patronize the Union Square greenmarket. Most of the fruits and vegetables I examined looked pathetic and wilted because of the heat, but by some miracle, I found a basket of perfect red currants.

I brought them home and decided to turn them into red currant mini-muffins, but halfway through adding the ingredients to a mixing bowl, I realized that I was craving chocolate. So, inspired by my new favorite Lindt chocolate flavor and this amazing cake on Epicurious, I broke out the cocoa powder and a bottle of Jack.

I've been in a rut with baking experiments lately, but these mini muffins turned out amazing. The whiskey made the chocolate flavor more complex, and the currants provided a little pop of tartness in every bite. These tasted even better the next day, so I'd recommend waiting overnight before enjoying them (or, if you're impatient, leaving the tray in front of the AC for twenty minutes when they come out of the oven... not that I did that last night, cough). You can also substitute a shot of orange juice or espresso for the whiskey in a pinch.

Red Currant Mini Muffins... With Chocolate and Whiskey

3/4 stick salted butter, softened

2 tbsp olive oil

3/4 cup sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1 tbsp baking powder

1 cup flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder

1 shot of whiskey

1 cup red currants, stems removed and washed

Confectioner's sugar, for dusting

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Beat butter, olive oil, and sugar until fluffy, then beat in eggs, whiskey, and vanilla. Add baking powder, flour, and cocoa powder and mix until incorporated. Stir in red currants. Spoon into greased or lined miniature muffin trays; cups should be nearly full. Bake for 22 minutes or until muffin tops are browned. When muffins have cooled, remove from trays, arrange on a plate, and dust with confectioner's sugar. Makes thirty miniature muffins. (This will also make a dozen regular muffins -- bake for about 30 minutes instead, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.) These also taste better the next day, so patience is a virtue.

Trios

"You treat me like I'm a princess. I'm not used to liking that. You ask how my day was." -- Alanis Morissette

On my way to work yesterday morning, I shared a subway pole with three other women. They did not appear to know each other. All three women held books. One was reading The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, one was reading The Girl Who Played With Fire, and the last was reading The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest.

On my way home from work yesterday evening, I shared a subway pole with three other women. They did not appear to know each other. All three women were listening to iPods. One's iPod screen displayed the cover art of Glee: The Music, Volume 2, one's screen displayed Glee: The Power Of Madonna, and the last's screen displayed Glee: Showstoppers.

Three Slices

"My advice is stand firm for what you believe in, until and unless logic and experience prove you wrong... and there's no aspect, no facet, no moment in life that can't be improved with pizza. Thank you." -- Daria Morgendorffer

I spent my morning in SoHo with Rutila, and by accident, our shopping trip was perfectly timed from beginning to end. She caught her bus, I caught my train, we arrived at 10 AM when the stores were opening and the streets were blissfully empty, we arrived at Lombardi's Pizzeria when the place had just opened, and we finished for the day just when Broadway started to get crowded. In commemoration of the three delicious slices of calamata olive and spinach pizza each of us consumed, I'm writing about three slices of our day.

1. Because I'm a crazy woman when it comes to makeup, skincare, and hair products, I had enough Sephora Beauty Insider points saved up to earn a 500 Point Perk today. (You get one "point" in your bank for every dollar you spend. Yep, I have a problem.) Anyway, my perk was a little shopping bag full of Benefit Cosmetics goodies, including a sample size of BADGal Plum mascara. It's a warm purple color designed to enhance one's eye color, but since I live and die by black mascara and black liquid liner, I was naturally skeptical. Miraculously, it works -- my normally nondescript brown eyes looked wider and more striking than usual today.

2. I purchased two cotton tanks -- one black and one slate blue -- at Uniqlo. The cut and quality felt identical to the J. Crew tank I was wearing... and they cost $4.90 apiece. I'm not sure if this is an indication of Uniqlo's general amazingness or J. Crew's slipping standards.

3. As always, Rutila and I lunched at Lombardi's, the oldest pizzeria in America and purveyor of the best coal-oven pie you'll ever devour. We arrived when the shop opened and shared a dining room with a crowd of about twenty visor-wearing, fanny pack-toting tourists. This normally isn't a problem, but we soon discovered that these tourists were on a pizza tour. Meaning they were accompanied by an overeager tour guide who spent half of our meal loudly delivering a lecture on all the crap you never wanted to learn about pizza. We heard about the pizza of New York City, the history of pizza, the composition of pizza, and the importance of staying hydrated while consuming pizza. The tourists were given pizza journals to record their undoubtedly profound observations about pizza, took turns visiting the kitchen to see the coal oven where the pizzas are made, and were instructed to look at the bottom crusts of their pizzas to observe the charring patterns.

Naturally, Rutila and I guffawed into our Italian sodas the entire time. We then began to chuckle audibly when the tour guide demonstrated "the semi-fold method" of eating a triangle slice -- which, allegedly, is the only way to eat pizza like a true New Yorker.

Note that Rutila and I were using knives and forks to eat our slices... and you can't get more Noo Yawk than the pair of us.

The tour guide then confided that the semi-fold method works on a scientific level "because it changes the moment of inertia of the slice." Yep. Cue the huge, ridiculous belly-laughs which earned us at least one withering glare from the tour guide.

And in an example of why the universe sucks, the pizzeria's top review on Yelp is written by some out-of-towner who calls herself a NY pizza expert after taking the same tour we overheard today! Hence the reason why Lombardi's mediocre website, not Yelp, is linked in this post. Too much asshattery for my taste.

Madman With A Box

"To hell with the 'raggedy.' Time to put on a show." -- the Eleventh Doctor

I haven't had to study for anything since I took my last college final two years and twenty days ago. I have a certification exam coming up in a few weeks, though, which means I'm currently calling all of my hard-earned and long-lost study skills into practice. I'm making slow progress on my huge stack of source material, but in the process, I've realized something horrifying: living a couple of blocks away from the Hungarian Pastry Shop and its bottomless coffee mugs during college ruined me for life, since I can no longer concentrate enough to study at home. As a result, in an effort to buckle down and get some work done, I've undertaken an unofficial tour of the coffee shops of New York City. And since the weather has been gorgeous, a lot of walking is involved.

Today, I walked a couple of miles to spend a few hours in my favorite bakery. I was dressed for a lazy Saturday, too -- dark jeans, high-top red Chuck Taylors, and one of my favorite t-shirts:

The graphic is a stylized portrait of David Tennant wearing 3D glasses in the 2006 season finale of Doctor Who. The episode aired way before David Tennant became a household name... not that the man in the image is recognizable as Tennant anyway. It also predates the show's popularity in America (and the Doctor's appearances on the sides of MTA buses) by half a decade. Point is, it's foreign, it's subtle, it's niche, and it's ridiculously obscure. Though I've worn the t-shirt regularly for the past three years, I can count on one hand the number of times someone has been able to positively identify the image's source.

Back to today's story. I studied at the bakery for a few hours, then I began walking to my next destination. Halfway down a residential block, I noticed an Orthodox priest walking towards me. How did I know he was an Orthodox priest? He looked exactly like the image that shows up on Wikipedia when you search for "Orthodox priest," robes, beard and all:

We locked eyes as we approached each other. I smiled and gave a little "good morning" nod. He gasped and pointed at my t-shirt. "That is my FAVORITE television show!" he exclaimed in a deep, heavily accented voice. After I picked up my jaw from the pavement, I told him that it was my favorite show, too. We then wished each other a good day and walked on.

I guess the Doctor transcends more than just time and space.

Curves Ahead

"Picture-perfect memories scattered all around the floor. Reaching for the phone 'cause I can't fight it any more. And I wonder if I ever cross your mind... for me, it happens all the time." -- Lady Antebellum

I've started drawing again. I've also started reading a lot about New York City architecture and infrastructure. One thing led to another, and before I knew what was happening, I had a sketchbook full of this:

From top to bottom: Wallace Harrison's Metropolitan Opera House; Harrison and Fouilhoux's Trylon, Perisphere, and Helicine from the 1939 New York World's Fair; Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center (i.e. my favorite building in the world); and, of course, Frank Lloyd Wright's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Checking Out

"One day I'll be thirty. One day I'll be fine. One day I'll make fun of this dramatic life of mine. One day I'll be older and then I'll write a book about the choices that I made. If that's what it is, then that's what it is... at least until Disney can rewrite it." -- Jason Robert Brown

This endless New York City winter is starting to melt into spring, which means I'm craving chocolate egg creams more often than not. I took a long walk to Johnny Rocket's for my egg cream fix on Thursday, but today, I decided to pursue a more economical approach to egg cream creation.

Thus, I found myself in the supermarket during my afternoon coffee break, clutching bottles of unflavored seltzer, whole milk, and Fox's U-Bet to my chest. My chosen checkout line was unnaturally short -- the man in front of me held one bag of dog food and the man in front of him was purchasing a six-pack of Fiji water and a bottle of San Pellegrino. Perfect; I only had fifteen minutes to spare, and I had used five of them walking here.

I settled into my place (and a huge cart settled behind me, barring any hope of escape) just in time to hear Water Man say that he required delivery of his purchases. He needed thirty cases of the Fiji water and fifty bottles of the Pellegrino, you see. Fine, I thought; I'd only be delayed by the length of time it took for him to fill out a delivery receipt.

However, my cashier -- a veritable rocket scientist of a woman -- did not realize that modern cash registers possess the ability to ring multiples of the same item by scanning said item and keying "x 40."

Instead, she scanned the Fiji six-pack thirty times.

Then she scanned the Pellegrino bottle fifty times.

Then she squinted at the register screen for five minutes, poking at the tally with a pen cap, to make sure she counted correctly.

Halfway through her Fiji scanning, Dog Food Man and I exchanged incredulous glances. Halfway through her Pellegrino scanning, Dog Food Man and I traded a few snide comments. Halfway through her recount, I picked up a copy of the National Enquirer. Halfway through Kendra Wilkinson's struggle to lose her baby weight, Water Man finally departed and made way for Dog Food Man.

Dog Food Man was my companion in suffering during Water Man's debacle, so I respected him. That is, until he decided to pay for his dog food using a handful of quarters. At this point, I began to wonder if Dog Food Man and Water Man were conspiring to drive me crazy. Our rocket scientist cashier was no help to my fragile mental state, either -- she hadn't gained any mathematical proficiency from her earlier counting exercises, so it took her a while to figure out how much money Dog Food Man had handed her.

After wasting entirely too much of my life in that damned supermarket, it was my turn to check out. I swiped my card, bagged my own groceries, and got the hell out of there as soon as humanly possible. The cashier, in a rare moment of lucidity, seemed relieved to see me go.

Love Story

"Romeo, take me somewhere we can be alone! I'll be waiting. All there's left to do is run." -- Taylor Swift

Halfway through my workday, I took a walk around the corner to grab a cup of coffee. As I headed back to my building, cup in hand, I noticed a tractor-trailer stopped at the red light directly in front of me. Or, more specifically, I noticed the truck's driver. He was large, burly, and balding, and he was singing along with something on the radio. He wasn't just mouthing the lyrics, though -- this dude was in total rockstar mode. He played the drums on his steering wheel, he tossed his head around, and he even interspersed a few well-placed fist-pumps into his performance.

I continued to watch him as I walked.

As I approached the corner, I noticed that his window was cracked open.

As I turned the corner, his blaring radio became audible.

Yeah. The truck driver was totally, passionately, and unabashedly rocking out to Taylor Swift.

The Future That Never Was

"Fifty years after the fair, I live in tomorrow town. Even on a wing and a prayer, the future never came around. It hurts to even think of those days, the damage we do by the hopes that we raise." -- Aimee Mann

Writing my last post got me thinking about Flushing Meadows Park. This, in turn, got me thinking about the two World's Fairs held there -- the first in 1939 and the second in 1964. Both events were the brainchildren of Robert Moses, the Master Builder who single-handedly designed the infrastructure of modern New York City. (Read up on the man if you have time. His life story is unbelievable.) Though Moses used the Fair as an excuse to turn the Flushing cinder dump into public parkland, the people of New York City saw it as so much more.

The World's Fair gave New Yorkers hope for a bright future when reality offered little encouragement; the first preceded World War II and the second came on the heels of JFK's assassination. One square mile of land in Queens was cleaned up for the cause, and different countries, US states, and major corporations erected lavish pavilions to showcase their products, people, and visions for the future of humanity. If you've ever been to EPCOT in Walt Disney World, that was the general idea. (And by "general idea," I mean that EPCOT was an idea that Walt Disney stole from the '64 World's Fair.)

I love learning about the World's Fair for the same reason I love EPCOT: I derive an inordinate amount of joy from studying my predecessors' expectations of the future. It's inspiring to see what innovations first presented at the World's Fair have enjoyed success (i.e. television, color photography, and the modem) and which never found a place in society (i.e. humanoid robots, Smell-O-Vision, and undersea vacation homes). It's even more interesting to compare our current technology with our grandparents' and parents' expectations of how our generation would live. True, we're not colonizing Mars or traveling at light speed, but I doubt that anyone in 1939 could have ever envisioned anything even remotely resembling the iPhone.

Despite which predictions came true and which predictions never came to pass, one aspect of the entire World's Fair experience can be recalled as indisputable fact: its optimism. The people of 1939 genuinely believed that humans would travel on automated highways and eat meals cooked by machines by 1960. The people of 1964 knew that they'd live to see moon bases and flying cars in the new millennium.

Flushing Meadows Park is still scattered with these certainties. Two time capsules filled with microfilm, "new" materials like stainless steel and nylon, knickknacks, and other symbols of our civilization are buried fifty feet under the cement with instructions not to open until 6939. A forty-foot sculpture of a Buck Rogers rocketship stands in a random driveway behind a building. A geodesic habitat designed by Buckminster Fuller houses forty species of birds at the Queens Zoo. The future of American architecture is slowly rotting despite preservation efforts, but it doesn't matter because most Americans only know it as something Will Smith shot out of the sky in 1997. Meticulous etchings of cars, robots, and transistor radios are underfoot everywhere. Tokens of world peace -- whether they're actual depictions of the world or pieces of native architecture donated by friendly nations -- are everywhere, too.

All of it makes me nostalgic and curious, but it also makes me sad. I'm a smart, forward-thinking research scientist with a firm grasp on technological innovations and a degree in the most cutting-edge discipline on the planet. And you know how I envision the future? Thinner cameras, iPods, and televisions. And that's about it. There are no robot butlers in my old age. No flying cars, teleportation devices, or jetpacks, either. I don't think we'll ever cure cancer or even come close to it. I don't think humans will travel any farther than the lunar surface. I don't envision food, architecture, or fashion significantly changing. No end to world hunger. No world peace.

I don't know if this makes me a pessimist or a realist, but when I walk through Flushing Meadows Park, it's nice to look back, look forwards, and forget.

All My Love To Long Ago

"I might have to wait. I'll never give up. I guess it's half timing and the other half's luck. Wherever you are, whenever it's right, you'll come out of nowhere and into my life... I just haven't met you yet." -- Michael Buble

Old things fascinate me and I've spent most of my life trying to figure out why. Is it the byproduct of growing up in a disposable culture? Is it sentimental? Is it part of the engineering mindset to appreciate things designed to withstand the test of time? Is it a consequence of always wondering "why?" Am I just an old soul? Whatever it is, I can't walk around an antique structure without thinking of people treading the same path a century earlier, and I spent far too much of my childhood and adolescence poring through Historical Society records, microfilm, and old photographs to learn about the origins of some of my favorite pieces of New York City.

Imagine my excitement, then, when I discovered that the aerial map on New York City's official website gained a new layer last week. You can now type in any address, district, or place of interest in the five boroughs to see what it looked like in 2008, 2006... or 1924.

Sure, I know when all the city's major landmarks were built -- most self-respecting history buffs have a general idea of timelines -- but it's still difficult to envision the way things looked without them. Well, it's all there in black and white on the NYC.gov website. I spent hours of my Friday poring over every inch of Jazz Age New York City, and the ways in which it's changed since then blew my mind. Half of the city's bridges didn't exist in 1924. (How the hell did people get to Staten Island?!) My place of employment looks like a row of tenements. Flushing Meadows Park, site of two World's Fairs and one of my favorite places to think myself back into the past, looks like F. Scott Fitzgerald's valley of ashes -- a barren wasteland covered in cinder. The Metropolitan Museum of Art was half its current size. And the location of my favorite building on the planet, Eero Saarinen's TWA Flight Center at JFK International Airport, was completely undeveloped:

I then decided to punch in the addresses of three places I've called home. First was my high school, situated at the intersection of four major highways in one of the busiest parts of Queens:

Next came the Seeley W. Mudd building, which houses my college's engineering department:

Last was the apartment house where I grew up:

The building's current foundations are outlined on each map in red... but the outline is merely a hint of what's to come. I've spent most of my life inhabiting those three places, and only eighty-five years ago, they were someone's backyard, an empty lot, and the middle of the freaking wilderness. It certainly puts my surroundings into perspective -- and makes me wonder what New York City will look like when I'm eighty-five years old.

Someone Else's Clothes

"I'll take your side. If I'm the only one, I'm used to that. I've been alone. I'd rather be the half of us... the least of you... the best of me." -- Jason Robert Brown

There used to be a restaurant on 70th and Broadway called Cafe Mozart. It wasn't a culinary paradise by any means, but I stopped in for dessert constantly and dragged countless friends there. Why? For the thrill of the moment when their eyes focused on the painting hanging above the piano... and the subsequent moment when they realized that the woman in the painting looked exactly like me.

I didn't pose for the painting, of course; I was six years old when it was created, so the model who once looked so much like me is probably in her forties by now. Ink-and-paint doppelgangers are nothing new in my world anyway; in addition to Ms. Cafe Mozart, I once blogged about a twin from the Notre Dame Class of 1948.

Things have been getting a little more real lately, though. A few weeks ago, one of my colleagues told me that she saw me on the upper west side on a Saturday afternoon. She spotted me from across the street as I was walking with friends, but since I seemed to be in a hurry, she didn't call out to stop me. Trouble was, I was nowhere near the upper west side that day. My colleague was bewildered -- she sees me every day and is perfectly equipped to recognize me from across a street in plain daylight -- but we laughed it off.

Today, one of the rotating MDs came up to me and apologized for freaking me out at the gym the other night. She was on the adjacent treadmill, kept smiling at me, and tried to initiate conversation, but I obviously didn't recognize her so I gave a nervous smile and switched treadmills to get away. I haven't been to the gym since I left college, but the MD worked out with me last Tuesday. She recognized my face, my hair, my body, and even my glasses.

So in this sprawling, diverse city of eight and a half million, some anonymous woman is living in my skin. She sees the world with my eyes, she tames my hair every morning, she flashes my smile, she keeps my body fit, she kisses with my lips. And though I'm pretty panicked about all of this, there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I just hope she's treating me with respect.